While Google Maps has had plenty of rivals on phones, it comes pre-installed on every Android phone that is licensed to use Google’s apps and services, making it the de facto standard. Google’s own Play Store, for example, shows that the app has been installed between one and five billion times. So the uptake of HERE Maps will be worth watching as it first becomes available for Galaxy phone owners and, presumably, for a wider range of Android phones in the future.

Why might people choose to use HERE Maps instead of Google’s own software?

Nokia has built up an extensive database of geographical information in 196 countries, including indoor maps for more than 90,000 buildings around the world. It supports turn-by-turn navigation for driving or walking as well. But the biggest advantage is the offline capabilities of HERE Maps. Google Maps has offline support as well, but it’s fairly limited by comparison: You get very little information about the points of interest and search functions won’t work.

When using HERE Maps offline, you really can’t tell that you’re actually offline because the app still works the way you’d expect it to: turn-by-turn navigation, details about places around you and searches that actually search:

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To use the app, your Galaxy phone must be running Android 4.1 or better with 1 GB or more of memory in your handset. Nokia says that it’s ultimately up to Samsung to decide which of its phones will be supported. Of course there are more Android phones than just the ones Samsung makes, so I’m looking forward to hearing about future plans for HERE Maps from HERE’s head of design, Peter Skillman, at our Gigaom Roadmap event next month: He’ll be discussing how maps and context can be a design platform.

But Here has its own quirks. The look of the maps aren’t as crisp and clean as Apple Maps. The Verge was able to take the app for a spin, and was impressed by some features, while disappointed in others, like the incomplete transit directions.

Incomplete transit directions and other missing data should be filled in the more people use Here — which is why getting on a widely used platform like iOS is so important to Nokia.

Here will eventually be available on Android and in Mozilla’s forthcoming Firefox OS.

]]>The mobile web version of Nokia Maps now looks and behaves more like a standard native application on Google Android and Apple iOS devices, thanks to HTML5: The navigation service now provides offline downloading of maps. This ability can reduce mobile broadband data charges or allow map usage in areas that have limited or no wireless data service.

Nokia’s mapping service is arguably one of the best software products to come from the Finland-based handset maker, and this update makes it even better. Why else would Microsoft decide to integrate Nokia Maps in the Windows Phone platform going forward? I used the web version of Nokia Maps earlier on Monday, finding it to be so full-featured that it was almost difficult to believe it to be a web application.

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The offline mapping mode is welcome, especially when many smartphone owners pay for set amounts of wireless data. Google, too, recently introduced downloadable maps, partially for this reason. Nokia’s implementation is somewhat limiting, though, at least in my short tests. The initial geographic area I wanted to map was too large, so Nokia Maps wouldn’t save it. I had to keep zooming and cropping before saving.

The end result was a reasonable size — about 15 square blocks of Philadelphia — and I had to boost the storage limits allocated to the service to get the 19 MB area map downloaded. Nokia calls these “neighborhood maps,” so if you’re planning to visit several areas, each neighborhood will have to be downloaded separately. That differs from Google’s solution, where I was able to grab a map of 10 square miles. Once you have a local map from Nokia stored on the device, you don’t have access to the guides and POIs, but you can zoom in for greater detail, just like Google’s version.